January 17, 2018

Short rows with a knook

I'm using shadow wraps because that's my favorite short row method. But everything explained here will still work with wrap and turn or any other type of short row method. I'm not explaining how to make the double stitches, there are plenty of knitting tutorials and videos about shadow wraps, for example here. And like all knitting stitches they work the same when knooking.

What is different in knooking is how to manipulate the cord while making short rows. Of course you can take a new cord for every row, but who wants to juggle that many cords? So instead I show you a method for which you need two cords if you work on a flat piece and if you work on something that is in the round before you start the short rows you don't even need an extra cord (but you can, and it might help). It is useful to work with two cords with a contrasting color.

Lets start with a row of 20 stitches and we are working simply in garter stitch. We are told by the pattern to wrap and turn after stitch 15.

Step 1

Before knitting this row remove the cord from the knook and attach another piece of cord. It will help if it is a different color. With the new cord on the knook, knit 15 stitches and in the next stitch create a shadow wrap (or if using conventional w&t, wrap this stitch). It is important that you slip the wrapped stitch on the knook (we are going to slip it back in the next row). You can see in the picture below that the last stitch on the knook is a wrapped stitch (a shadow wrapped stitch in this case).

Step 2

Start pulling on the old cord directly on the left of the wrapped stitch. After you created a loop you can carefully pull the cord out from under the knook. The stitches on the left of the wrapped stitch will remain on the old cord.

You can now pull the new cord through the stitches you just made and turn the work.

Step 3

Now remove the cord you just used from the hole in the knook (in my case the purple ribbon) and insert the old cord again (in my case the green ribbon). You can now start knitting the next row. Very important: slip the wrapped stitch, don't knit it, slip it.

Step 4

Lets imagine that the pattern instructions for row 2 say to knit 10 stitches and then do another shadow wrap and turn. The stitch we slipped doesn't count towards that 10. So knit 10 and then make another shadow wrapped stitch.

Step 5

Again pull out the cord directly to the left of the wrapped stitch. Pull it out and pull through the knook and the cord. Turn your work and it should look like this.

Step 6 and onward

You just keep changing cords after every row and remember to slip the wrapped stitches. Then you are all set and can knit a lot of short rows with only 2 cords. Here is my project after a lot of short rows. You can see that each cord carries the wrapped stitches on one side of the work.

So remember:

After creating a shadow wrapped stitch slip it on the knook (also do this if you have a standard wrapped stitch)

Pull on the cord on the left side of the wrapped stitch to remove it from the stitches you just knooked

Pull your cord through the stitches

Turn your work and switch cords

Slip the wrapped stitch and continue according to your pattern

Special case: in the round (for example sock heels)

If you were working in the round before starting the short rows you don't even need an extra cord (you can though, if you want). You can alternate the two ends of the cord instead of alternating between two different cords.